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PC turning off randomly

Hi there!

Lately I'm having the problem that my PC turns off at random (happened again just an hour ago). No crash, no messages, just as if I had cut off the power. First I suspected something with the power management, so I turned off all ACPI / APM functionality, but it still happened.
My question: Why? Could the cause be a dirty PSU? I've opened my PC and once again cleaned it out, and there were LOADS of dust in the PSU and the CPU cooler; as the PC didn't crash, I assume it wasn't an overheated CPU. Does an ATX PSU cut off the power when it gets too hot? I didn't exactly burn my fingers, but the PSU was quite warm when I opened my case.

Any opinions?

edit: Oh, I forgot: The PC was running all day, but being idle (just running a screensaver and some ISDN stuff like answering machine and fax receiver), but when I decided to go surfing a bit before bed time - bang! - it went down after a couple of minutes....

Last edited by Ford Prefect; November 18th, 2002 at 07:01 PM.

There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

As a side note, I don't know if there's any connection or if it's coincidence... it never happens when I sit and watch my PC, like watching DVD's or some fancy game fly-by (did that for testing purpose... really boring ). Most times it happens when I scroll my MOUSE WHEEL.... (MS Intellimouse Explorer USB). Possible? Could the mouse be defective and causing a short or something? I don't really want to buy a new PSU and then realize that it's not the PSU's fault....

There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

hmmm I've tried a different mouse, even different types (PS/2, serial). No change. I have, however, noticed that the problem only *seems* to ocur when I'm using MSIE.... I can work / surf for hours, even heavy tasks like video encoding, but when I have to us the IE for certain pages that don't support Mozilla (which is a shame that those pages even exist), it's a matter of time that the PC turns off. I've made an intense scan of my HDD, but haven't found any viruses.... now this is becoming really eerie....

There is an art, or rather, a knack to flying.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.